Holland Doc
Holland Doc is a documentary channel of the Netherlands. It is a digital theme channel, available 24 hours, 7 days a week. Typically programs are in the Dutch language. Yet, depending on the subject of the documentary the language will be non-Dutch with Dutch subtitles (English is perhaps the second most common language).
Holland Doc: Focus on Georgia - January 24 - 30, 2009
The Cobra Museum in Amstelveen (The Netherlands) shows from January 24 contemporary art from Georgian artists. In addition to this exhibition Holland Doc will show documentaries about Georgia, the small country in the Caucasus with a Dutch First Lady and a very turbulent recent history.
Cobra Museum: Born in Georgia - January 24 - June 14, 2009
This exhibition provides a fascinating overview of the recent developments in the work of an entire generation of young Georgian artists. Even though contemporary politics has manifestly had an impact on their work, this is not what gives it its direction. In terms of forms of expression, art rooted Georgian soil is thriving entirely within contemporary Western art traditions. At the same time, however, this work is deeply grounded in the region from which the artists have come.
NOSTALGIA
Georgia, Netherlands 1998, 58 min
Director: Tato Kotetishvili, Ineke Smits
Producer: Lumen Film, Cesar Messemaker
Script: Tato Kotetishvili
Cinematography: Edwin Verstegen
Editor: Jamie Trevill
After a long stay in the Netherlands, Tato Kotetishvili returned in 1997 to his native Georgia, where civil war had been raging for ten years. There, while videotaping his own wedding, he interviewed family and friends about how the war had changed their lives. Kotetishvili unexpectedly died before he could edit the footage, and so his partner, Smits, completed the film.
PUTIN'S MAMA
Netherlands 2003, 51 min
Director: Ineke Smits
Producer: Pieter van Huystee, Pieter van Huystee Film
Script: Ineke Smits
Cinematography: Giorgi Beridze
Music: Gio Tsinsadze
Editor: Menno Boerema
Sound: Maarten van Gent
Not much in Vera Putina's 77-year existence distinguished her from all those other Russian women who grew up and grew old in the Soviet Union. Then, in 1999, she recognized in Vladimir Putin the son she thought was lost forever. Did the son that Vera thought was lost, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, really become the President of Russia? Vera no longer asks this question: for her it is undoubtedly true. She is not alone, for her daughters and the other inhabitants of the Georgian village of Metechi are also sure that the ten-year-old who disappeared long ago is the very same as Russia's leader. An unusual portrait of Putin's former world and family and a humourous portrait of a vivacious ageing lady who gave birth to one of the world's most powerful men.
THEIR HELICOPTER
Georgia 2006, 22 min
Director: Salome Jashi
Producer: Salome Jashi
Cinematography: Tato Kotetishvili
Editor: Salome Jashi
Sound: Irakli Metreveli, Salome Jashi
The peaceful, everyday life of a rural family: the father works in the fields, the mother cooks or washes the dishes, the children play, tease their little brother or sing him a lullaby, the cattle graze on the rich grass. But a shadow is lurking close by. The camera draws back to reveal the bulbous, dislocated carcass of a Chechen helicopter that crashed there accidentally years before.
POWERTRIP
USA 2003, 85 min
Director: Paul Devlin
Cinematography: Paul Devlin
Editor: Paul Devlin
Sound: Paul Devlin
Production company: Films Transit International, Inc.
In 1999, the American multinational concern AES Corp. acquired from the Georgian government Telasi, the only company in the country generating and distributing electricity. AES-Telasi was supposed to invest into the obsolete distribution network and continue supplying electricity across Georgia. The American way of management of the newly acquired enterprise and interventions in the inactive organization collided with nearly unbridgeable obstacles. The main customers, poor inhabitants of the country, could not understand why all of a sudden they should pay more for the electricity.
NO GOODS TODAY
Netherlands 2002, 50 min
Director: Jessica Gorter, Susanne Helmer
Cinematography: Jessica Gorter
Sound: Susanne Helmer
Editor: Menno Boerema
A Dutch benefactor decides to save a local TV station in Georgia but soon finds himself in a non-transparent web of contrary interests and shady dealings.
For more information about the films and TV listings, please visit www.hollanddoc.nl.